Justin Vellucci stories

Pittsburgh police and the FBI are investigating who distributed antisemitic flyers and harassed Jewish residents over the weekend in Squirrel Hill — the most recent in a growing list of antisemitic incidents in the city. The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said Monday in a statement that members of the...

Prosecutors have dropped an attempted homicide charge against a man arrested for a daylight shooting in a Pittsburgh neighborhood business district, but he will face trial for aggravated assault and a firearms count. Amirre Brown, 20, on Tuesday waived his preliminary hearing in a Downtown Pittsburgh courtroom. Pittsburgh police said...

After powerful storms swept through Western Pennsylvania this week, meteorologists hesitated to apply labels — though terms like derecho began to circulate. A derecho is a fast-moving, long-lived windstorm that the National Weather Service says can produce tornado-like damage — but in a single, straight path. To qualify, it must...

A Penn Hills man awaiting trial for multiple drug crimes was charged this week with carrying heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and a stolen gun and repeatedly smashing a stolen SUV into a police vehicle while trying to flee. Allegheny County Police on Tuesday arrested Timothy Terry Jr. on 23 criminal charges,...

Don’t expect to see the waterworks anytime soon at Point State Park. The majestic fountain that marks the confluence of Pittsburgh’s three iconic rivers won’t be turned on until 2026, due to a bevy of planned upgrades, the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said Tuesday. State officials plan...

A South Fayette man has pleaded guilty in federal court to filming himself having sex with a 14-year-old girl, then sending her photos and a video of the encounter. Matthew Trax, 25, used “multiple iPhones” to record sex acts with the teen in November 2023, authorities said. Trax pleaded guilty...

A Pittsburgh man is headed to federal prison for five years for leading a multimillion-dollar operation that laundered money and resold stolen goods at jacked-up prices through a series of retail stores in the area, prosecutors said Thursday. U.S. District Judge Mark R. Hornak sentenced Durrell Waters, 41, in federal...

Prosecutors Wednesday withdrew all charges against a retired Pittsburgh police sergeant accused of shooting her grandson. Pittsburgh police arrested Virginia Beck, 64 — who retired in 2019 after a nearly four-decade career with the city’s police force — in February on attempted homicide, aggravated assault and other charges. Police said...

A federal judge Wednesday sentenced a Pittsburgh man with a history of gun convictions to 10 years in prison after he shot at — but did not injure — a mail carrier on the city’s North Side in 2023. Authorities said Martinel Humphries, 30, on Jan. 5, 2023, fired four...

A 63-year-old man was high on methamphetamine and driving with a suspended license when he darted his car around a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus in Duquesne last September and struck a man in a wheelchair, breaking his neck, police said. The driver, Nicola Migliori, of Monongahela, had his preliminary hearing...

A former Pittsburgh doctor Monday pleaded not guilty to charges that he tried to kill his wife last month in Hawaii. Police arrested Gerhardt Konig, 46, a former UPMC anesthesiologist who lived in Mt. Lebanon, after authorities say he bludgeoned his wife Arielle’s head with a rock and tried to...

Police have charged two Pittsburgh men with breaking into a Knoxville home in 2022, brutally assaulting the man who lived there and videotaping part of the attack before killing him. Deonte Kidd, 30, of Lincoln-Lemington, and Le’Juane Powell, 31, of Beltzhoover, were charged last week in the death of Victor...

On a sunny March afternoon, a blind woman walked up to a bus stop on Sewickley’s Beaver Street, guided as much by her white cane as her spunky 6-year-old daughter. Kong Lee takes Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s bus route 14 several times a week to pick up the youngest of her...

An Aliquippa man extorted a North Fayette ninth grader for “sexual conduct” last year in exchange for fentanyl, which killed her, according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday. Shakeirs Deveye Foster, 28, was arrested Tuesday in connection with the May 14, 2024, death of Mia Pepper, 15. She is identified...

A Pittsburgh teen was arrested Thursday after he accidentally killed his friend while the two were playing with guns, authorities said. Khyree Harper, 17, of South Side, was holding a pistol and exchanging gun magazines with Tyrome Gatewood in a Knoxville home around 1 p.m. Thursday, a witness told Pittsburgh...

At first, Arielle Konig thought her husband was kidding. They had just taken a selfie — at his suggestion, she said — by the edge of a cliff with a steep drop along a hiking trail in Hawaii. She got dizzy and moved away from the drop. Suddenly, according to...

Thomas Laron Smith drove his black SUV past a McKees Rocks market three times one night last December before stopping to talk to Floyd Wilson, a 51-year-old man sitting in his wheelchair nearby. Wilson started quarrelling with someone in Smith’s vehicle, but about what was unclear, according to a criminal...

Gerhardt Konig smiled in the Oct. 5, 2018, Facebook photo as his new bride leaned into his side, holding a bouquet against her white dress. The photogenic couple stood under a garden arbor adorned with white flowers. “Best. Day. Ever.” Konig wrote. On Wednesday, some 6½ years later, authorities in Hawaii...

An Allegheny County jury only needed about three hours Friday before finding Terrence Washington guilty of first-degree murder in the 2020 shooting death of his ex-girlfriend, Makeida Thompson. The prosecution had lobbied for the verdict, telling the jury that Washington meant to kill the mother of his child during a...

Pittsburgh Regional Transit is recommending drastic changes — a 25-cent fare hike and steep, widespread service cuts — to address what it said is a huge budget deficit and insufficient state aid. If ultimately approved by the transit agency’s board, the fare hike would take effect next year. Single-ride fares...

Makeida Thompson worried her ex-boyfriend — the father of their 1-year-old son — was setting a trap when he invited her to his grandmother’s Pittsburgh house to clear the air. Thompson and Terrence Washington recently had broken up. Hundreds of text messages they exchanged, read Wednesday by a detective during...

A McKeesport man was convicted Wednesday of fatally shooting a New Kensington man after a fight outside a Pittsburgh skate shop and entertainment space. Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Randal B. Todd court found Zahvair Palmer, 23, guilty of third-degree murder in the March 19, 2022, death of Adam Cloud,...

A judge Tuesday sentenced a Pittsburgh man to nearly a decade in federal prison for robbing three Shadyside banks, rejecting a request for leniency because of the defendant’s mental illness. The federal public defender who represents Rashon Coleman, 31, of the city’s East Liberty neighborhood, maintained his client’s schizophrenia and...

A judge Tuesday gave a former North Braddock police officer two years of probation after he pleaded guilty to drug charges just before his scheduled nonjury trial. Craig William Gibson, 47, of McKeesport, had been accused of dealing drugs in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s...

A man was shot Monday afternoon in the abdomen in Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood. Pittsburgh police found the victim, an adult who authorities did not name, suffering from gunshot wounds in the 800 block of Brookline Boulevard about 5 p.m. The man had been shot twice near Brookline Boulevard at Flatbush...